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May 30, 2005

Speaking of art, remember those great industry portraits that used to be in BRAIN? You know, the ones that accompanied the profiles of industry personalities? Well turns out that former editor of BRAIN, Michael Gamstetter is quite an artist. In addition to writing for Cycle Sport Magazine, Michael is actively pursuing his art. You can see more of his bicycle industry portraits in his online gallery . Subjects include Ben Serotta, Wayne Lumpkin, Maurice Tierney, Lennard Zinn (pictured) and Sky Yaeger.

It'd be great to get together a list of bicycle art sources and links. If you know of any, go ahead and leave a comment or email me.

May 27, 2005

No pressure he says... and yet the sweat is rolling down my back as I type this first piece.

I am honored to become a part of this forum since I have been reading and posting comments for a while now and thoroughly enjoy it. As Jonathan pointed out in the introduction, the bike industry and the sport have both consumed my existence for quite some time now- 2/3's of my life now. It is my greatest passion and reward, outside of my family of course, and I have striven to stay in it. Between the people and the products, I have been lucky to be a part of it.

For this first installment, I thought I'd share my blogging beginnings and rationale behind it.

I'd been hearing more and more about blogging and having no idea what it really was during the Presidential campaign. I was fascinated by the idea that bloggers were contributing to the national discussion with such impact. Then the whole Kryptonite thing went down and I started thinking about starting my own blog for Masi Bicycles and for my own writings as well. The last straw was a report by the Gluskin Townley Group in March about the impact of the Kryptonite issue on the bike industry and how it unfolded through blogging before being picked up by mainstream media. That was it and I was in that day. Now, please keep in mind that I am not a tech savvy individual, so this was a daunting task to me. It has proven to be incredibly simple though.

In hindsight, I really should have asked for permission from the bosses before I started the blog, but I believed I needed to act quickly. With a very small budget for advertising, I really felt I needed to exploit the opportunity to reach my customers for free. So I started the blog and have been trying to maintain it and learn from it daily. I have been learning more and adding things as I get over my initial fears and it is really proving quite productive. I mean, I can get my retailers and consumers both to give me information critical to developing my products and the overall business... and it doesn't cost me anything.

The blog has been a wonderful tool for me and has gotten the attention of the "higher ups" who are happy to see what has been happening and the resulting publicity and attention. Between the article in BRAIN, BikeBiz and the discussion that took place on Business Week Online, they have been very pleased. So pleased that I will be incorporating a newsletter (of sorts) on the Masi website to further reach "my people".

Ultimately, I see blogging as a huge part of how I can fine tune the brand I get to lead. It is my sincere hope to see more industry people blogging because it is an opportunity to share ideas and experiences and increase overall awareness with consumers as well.

Tim Jackson is the Brand Manager at Masi Bicycles. He's had his own blog since March '05 (read story in BRAIN). He'll be expanding the perspectives and brain trust around here considerably. I'm sure you'll find his insights interesting, entertaining and informative (no pressure Tim ;-) )

Here's a brief rundown of Tim's experiences:

Began competitive cycling as a Junior in 1982.

First bike shop job in 1982 at Bay Cycles in Fairhope, Alabama.

Worked at Chula Vista Schwinn in high school in 1986-87.

Worked at Cycling Tunes, which became one of the multiple locations for Bike USA, later purchased by Performance.

Returned to bike industry in July of2003 as Inside Sales Manager for Canari Cyclewear.

Left Canari in late September to become Brand Manager of Masi Bicycles. (he wears many helmets at Masi including; sales, marketing, product development, component spec, team/ sponsorship coordination, working and traveling with rep force, working with international distributors and overseas travel to work with manufacturers/ suppliers.

Good for UBI. But I can't read this without thinking about another bike industry company that does more for sustainability than anyone in the industry yet would never toot their own horn about it...Chris King Components. You want to know about environmental accountability? These guys wrote the book.

The May 15 issue of BRAIN had a story about this...but I just found out the show has been moved back a week. The new air date is set for June 4th at 11AM.

So, remember to watch Indepedent Fabrications on CNN. They'll be featured on "The TurnAround," a show that pairs a small business (IF) with a high-profile CEO. Should be a rare chance to see behind the scenes of a bike company. It will also be interesting to see how this hot-shot CEO from a big, unnamed outdoor company interacts with the wide-eyed boys from Somerville.

May 26, 2005

Everyone knows the Kryptonite story. It made for compelling water cooler talk for a few weeks. But beyond that I wonder how many bike companies (large and small) made real changes in their Internet strategy as a result of it. How many companies have installed proactive plans to research, intercept, and glean the potentially disastrous or quite helpful information floating around the Web? My guess is not many.

CGM, or "consumer generated media" (forums, blogs, product review sites) play a major role in influencing brand perceptions and purchase decisions. That probably isn't big news to you. But is your company doing anything to monitor this chatter?

"Companies need to know how to find and analyze what's on the Internet to have a deeper understanding of opinions, sentiment and winds of change. Type in any brand name or product into a Google or Yahoo! search engine and you're just as likely to find a consumer-owned web site or online forum about that product (positive or negative) as your are to find the corporate or branded website."

Ask yourself:

Do you have a strategy/policy in place to track what's being said online about your brand, your niche, and other things that affect your business?

Have you identified at least one employee to monitor forums, review sites and blogs?

Is that employee savvy to the latest search and tracking tools available?

Is that employee empowered, trusted and prepared to respond directly when necessary and/or report to management about what they find?

Is that person monitoring the web on a very frequent basis?

CGM is quickly growing not only in volume but in quality and impact as well. More and more people have broadband connections, digital cameras and camcorders, and knowledge of how to post streaming video. Forums have improved and many of them offer robust search capabilities which can bring you vast amounts of useful marketing and product development information

And unless you've been a cave for the past few months, you might also realize that blogs have catapulted into the mainstream. This means more of your customers are now publishing and broadcasting their opinions and feelings about your brand and products to their families, friends, co-workers and Internet communities.

If I were you I'd listen and take notes. Because there will be a test and you don't want to fail this one. Trust me.

(Stay tuned for Part II where I'll share some tools and tricks I use to monitor information online)

May 25, 2005

Phil Liggett is one of the classiest dudes in the cycling world, so it's sad to see his name on something as tacky as a Dummies book. Maybe this one will be different but my experiences with these has always been disappointing.

On the other hand, I'm glad to see the publisher take an interest in cycling and this will be just one more piece of exposure for what I expect to be a tremendous summer for U.S. cycling.

Just yesterday I met with the local Portland bike messenger crew about their upcoming event(I'm writing a story on it for Dirt Rag). During our conversation we talked about how the bike industry is so enamored with the messenger scene.

My take is that as the major brands in the bike biz become more and more corporate and lacking in soul, the purity and hardcore edge of the messenger lifestyle become that much more attractive.

I can't stand it when automakers use bikes to help sell cars...even though the marketing side of me understands why it's so effective. In my opinion, our society's obsession with cars and the resulting traffic, pollution, accidents, etc... that they cause, is the single largest deterrent to getting more people on bikes.

In a perfect world, the bike industry wouldn't have to be so reliant on the huge amount of money that automakers pump into our industry in the form of big, expensive, full-page ads in our magazines or as titles sponsors of our teams and events. It would be interesting to do a study to find what percentage of sponsorship and advertising dollars in the bike industry are from automakers.

Obviously cars have helped our sport grow (how else would we get to all the races?) but it just seems strange to me that from an advocacy standpoint cars are our biggest enemy...but then we all love them when they give us money.